Q) Ships should not be able to turn with 0% sails
A) No. We can't distinguish between a ship that has 0% sails and a ship that has 100% sails. The turning mechanics are only tied to speed. So, a ship that has its sails furled turns as slow as a demasted ship. If you ever ran into an obstacle (most notably an invisible wall), you need to be able to turn while stopped or you're screwed.

Q) Small ships should be much faster than big ships.
A) No. Ships used to get slower and slower the bigger they got, and it just wasn't fun. It also had two major drawbacks. One, big ships could never kill small ships because they can just run away every time. Two, big ships could never run away from small ships. Instead, we're trying to build up a dynamic relationship between max speed, acceleration, wind angles and ship outfitting.

Q) Ships should be different for each nation.
A) If we do this so that it matters, then it becomes a huge balance issue task and it'll lead to lots of gripes about national bonuses. If the effect is small, then it's not worth weeks of work.

Also, we have a limited number of ship models to go around. Getting access to different ships is a big part of the game, and we don't have enough models to divide them up between all the nations.

Q) Privateers should be able to sail SOLs.
A) No.

Q) Pirates should be able to sail SOLs without the invalid PvP flag.
A) No.

Q) In boarding combat, why does the enemy ship sometimes have more crew in the boarding encounter than it did in ship space?
A) The boarding encounter spawns a minimum of one wave of troops for each side. That means if you reduce a ship below 6 or 12 crew it won't affect the number of troops in the encounter.

Q) It should be easier to get a free ship.
A) We don't want players to repeatedly access free ships, and this is an area that will see lots of tweaks. We're going to be adding simple missions that allow you to get a one-time civ ship deed appropriate to your level.

Q) Why isn't attacker defeat penalized in boarding combat?
A) It will be, but not by ship loss.

Q) Where is the 'Destroyer' Pirate Frigate?
A) Due to an edge case in what our help files support, we can't show the ship or recipe in the help. You can acquire the recipe through conquest rewards.

Q) How do I get the career refit ships?
A) You need to have a deed plus the refit item. The refits are intended to be prohibitively expensive. You can either produce them in the economy or earn them by completing your career story arc.

Q) Can I upgrade my ship to a mastercraft ship?
A) Once you use a ship deed it exits the economy. You will need to acquire another deed to make a mastercraft ship.

Q) Ships that are involved in boarding combat should take less damage.
A) They do, but there's a bug that makes their toggles drop.

Q) Why can't multiple people work together to sail a single ship?
A) This isn't how the game is designed. Everyone assumes the role of a ship captain, and that is where we've placed our focus. Allowing multiple players to sail a ship is a challenging task because we have to make all the positions fun. We haven't seen a compelling way to make the simple tasks on a ship fun. If you're a gunner, we can't allow you to fire unless the captain gives the order - this applies to any job. Additionally, it creates a big balance problem. If the additional players make a ship much more effective, then you need huge groups of people to compete in combat. If the players don't boost the ship's effectiveness, then it'd never get used.

Q) Why can we see all information about a ship and player as soon as they're in spotting range?
A) We looked into that system in the past. This will never happen unless we rework some of the structural aspects of our game. When you see a ship, the server tells you that the ship exists. If we "hide" information about the ship it would be purely visual - the client would still know. Then we'd end up with a bunch of hacked clients that get all the data on the ship. In order to prevent that we'd have to redo the way the server tells you about the existence of an object, so that it can piecemeal things. That means we have a lot more load on the server. Next, we'd have to figure out what to do about the graphics - if we tell your client to draw a 104gun model your client knows what model we're sending. If we show a different model, then you'd see ships popping and changing as they cross the distance threshold to show the right now.

Also, with the abstraction on the Open Sea it's often no more than a few seconds before you'd close into range where you could see all the stats.